Wildlife Impacts: Reported Incidents over time

Wildlife impacts (or at the very least the ones that have been reported) have increased significantly since 2000 compared to the 90s. I wonder if this is down to an overall increase in flights for across the board.

How many of these actually caused any damage to the aircraft reported in the incidents?

So although the vast majority of wildlife strikes have caused minor or uncertain damage, let’s focus for a bit on the ones that caused substantial damage or actually destroyed aircraft. There are no destroyed incidents recorded in the data set which must be some sort of error so we can look at that later.

What are the bird species responsible for the most damaging incidents?

## Selecting by percent

Let’s get rid of unknown birds as they don’t tell us much.

## Selecting by percent

So Gulls are responsible for most of the known species of wildlife impacts. Let’s start calling them birds to keep it simple!

Height and speed of the bird impacts by time of day

So most serious impacts occur by day, at low altitude at between 100-200mph. This suggests that most impacts occur during the start or end of a flight i.e. on or just after take off or on the approach to land. This would make sense.

Number of serious accidents by Phase of flight

So around 40% of bird strikes occur on the approach rather than just after take off.

What is the breakdown of impacts by phase of flight, time of day and the sky?

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